Turkey's Leader Defends His Record

Prime Minister Vows Return With Stronger Mandate

June 17, 1997|By New York Times News Service.

ISTANBUL — At what seemed to be a farewell news conference, Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan said Monday he would resign soon but predicted that after new elections he would return to office with a stronger mandate.

Erbakan, the first Islamist politician to lead modern Turkey, has been under intense pressure from the military. Senior officers say his government is undermining the secular basis of the Turkish state and leading the country toward fundamentalism.

Although Erbakan would not say when he intended to resign, aides said it probably would happen Wednesday.

He hopes to turn his job over to his coalition partner, Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller, but it is far from certain that he will be able to do so.

Under the constitution, Erbakan will hand his resignation to President Suleyman Demirel, who is an outspoken secularist but who has also issued warnings in recent days about the need to preserve civilian rule.

Demirel may ask anyone to form a new government, and that person would then have to try to win support from a majority of the 550 members of parliament.

Erbakan and his senior aides believe Ciller would be the logical first choice, but others are not so sure. She has been tainted by charges of corruption, which she has denied.

Some Turkish analysts suspect Demirel will ask Mesut Yilmaz, leader of the secular Motherland Party, to try to form the next government.

At the news conference in Istanbul on Monday, Erbakan defended his record and accused his critics of trying to overrule the will of the voters. His Welfare Party finished first in the 1995 election, taking slightly more than 21 percent of the vote.

Erbakan did not directly criticize the military, but he took strong exception to the view that the military is responsible for defending Turkey's political system as well as its territory.

He said the Cabinet, not the military-dominated National Security Council, "is the body that carries the real responsibility."

In an interview last week, Turkey's deputy chief of staff, Gen. Cevik Bir, said the military has a broader legal mandate than the U.S. or British military. On Monday, Erbakan rejected that view.

"There is democracy in this country," he said. "The situation here is the same as it is in the United States, Britain, Germany and all democratic countries. In these countries, the military cannot decide anything by itself."

Apparently responding to military demands that he curb Muslim organizations and restrict religious education, Erbakan said: "We would like to have freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of education, freedom of association. Certain ideas have been put forth suggesting that these freedoms be restricted. We think this is a step backward, not forward."

A federal prosecutor has begun proceedings to ban the Welfare Party, and on Monday Erbakan said that "in a democracy there is not and cannot be such a thing as closing parties."

Erbakan predicted that in new elections, which he hopes will be in October, his party would win 10 million votes. That would be a huge increase from the 6 million it won in 1995, and might give him enough seats in parliament to form a government without a coalition partner.

Military commanders have signaled they will not tolerate such a government.